


Lots of Good Fish in the Sea

by merripestin



Category: The Mikado - Sullivan/Gilbert
Genre: F/F, Infidelity, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merripestin/pseuds/merripestin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps she was only lonely for Yum-Yum. I cannot say. But on Tuesday she came to me and while we argued over bolts of silk, she touched my right elbow, lightly, with two soft little fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lots of Good Fish in the Sea

I liked him, this bearish thing I had married. Not as I had felt for the fair, frail young prince with his smooth face and delicate hands, not that trembling sting of hunger as if he were a plum and I had been fasting. But Ko-Ko was gentle enough, and tenderhearted. And better, clever enough to have tricked me into this marriage in the first place.

Those days of the royal visit, before the Mikado took his son and his son's beautiful, beautiful wife back to his gosho of gold and diamond, I stayed in our own rooms and rearranged the screens to suit me, and sent away the servants I didn't like, and taught Ko-Ko not to argue with me when it came to money, or food, or the household, or anything else. I gave little thought to Ko-Ko's remaining wards, who soon went back to finish out the summer at their school.

They came back at nightfall during the harvest festival, and it was under the light of lanterns, the first time I saw her that season. Pitty-Sing, that smug little cat who had clawed me for her sister's sake, that sly beautiful defiant child. She had a lantern on a stick and a plum in her hand. Our eyes met, a distance of fifteen paces between us. Wretched Pish Tush walked between us, asking Peep-Bo about her brushwork and what history she was reading. When he had passed, we were both still looking. Then she turned away to her baggage.

I have had to cut my own way, for I have no pretty face to go before me. I have never learned the subtle skills of lovely girls, what to say, how to giggle and hide behind my fan, how to move. I do not know what she did. There was a shifting of shoulders, perhaps a toss of the hair. She glanced back with a slow, smug smile like a cat's. And then she bared the nape of her neck to me.

A moment only, and it was gone.

Ko-Ko was humming at breakfast the next day, made cheerful by the homecoming, full of rude, clever little comments about various prominent townspeople. He made me laugh. The scrap of paper was folded under my bowl and I saved it in my sleeve until he had gone.

_I've had plums enough;  
the leaves grow tiger-colored,  
so I think of you._

Perhaps she was only lonely for Yum-Yum. I cannot say. But on Tuesday she came to me and while we argued over bolts of silk, she touched my right elbow, lightly, with two soft little fingers.

Wednesday she changed the screens around her bed, disrupting the whole house, and laughed at my outrage.

Thursday she and Peep-Bo wasted half a basket of apples throwing them at each other, and though her sister shrieked and retreated before my wrath, she sat halfway up a tree with her bare ankles hanging down, and laughed, and threw an apple at me.

Friday it was my left shoulder blade, and her mouth.

I am not Nanki-Poo's empress in the golden rooms of the Mikado's gosho. I am a jumped-up tailor's wife in a little town called Tittipu. But I have plums enough. 


End file.
